Numerical Simulation of Natural Convection and Radiation on Performance of uniform Fins Geometry

In this work, numerical simulations of thermal processing in a uniform fin geometry have been investigated to evaluate the effect of adding the heat loss by radiation on the fin effectiveness. The heat transfer through the fin has been considered to be one-dimensional and under steady state condition. The mathematical formulations have been converted into dimensionless form and discretised by Finite Volume Method (FVM). The results obtained with and without including radiation effect have been compared. Numerical simulations of temperature distribution have been obtained for a uniform fin shapes with insulated fin tip. The effects of radiation heat transfer coefficient (NR), convection heat transfer coefficient (NC), fluid temperature (θf) and medium temperature (θs) have been investigated. The developed in-house code has been validated against the analytical solution, which definitely display that the numerical and analytical solutions are identical. The numerical results indicated that NC, NR, θf and θs strongly affect the temperature distribution. It has been found that the case of both radiation and convection dissipate more heat as compared with that obtained by only convection. For high fin base temperature and low surrounding temperature, the heat transfer by radiation becomes more significant and thus, sufficient consideration should be taken in the design of extended surfaces. Finally, the current analysis prove that is an effective means of fin design in order to enhance the heat dissipation.